WMI: WMI Service Failure

Description: Failures with the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service are rare and it can be difficult to discern when having a WMI issue whether a problem is due to an issue with a client application or script utilizing WMI, the WMI service, a WMI provider and/or the object being managed by WMI. If an issue is found to be with Microsoft WMI service itself, support for it will be provided by the Microsoft Platforms Performance support team.

Scoping the Issue: As mentioned previously, it is important to identify the components involved in the WMI issue. If the root of an issue is a failure with the WMI service then it will affect any client application or script that attempts to utilize WMI. This is also true for any WMI provider utilized on the system. To determine basic WMI service functionality it is necessary to perform a few basic queries using some of the default WMI classes to note whether correct results are obtained. If expected results are returned then the WMI service may not be failing. If the queries fail then the service may be failing.

When performing the tests, the WMI testing utility (WBEMTEST.EXE) that comes with Windows can be used to perform various queries and actions. There are many default providers that come with the various versions of Windows operating systems. These and the classes that they present are outlined in the following on the Microsoft MSDN site.